Dan Simmons - Hard Freeze

I could leave now , thought Hansen, his thoughts tuned to the metronomic pulse of the windshield wipers. Plant this.38, make an anonymous 911 call fingering the murderer of the old lady in Cheektowaga, and leave now . This would be the forearm-clearing-the-chess-pieces answer to the dilemma and it had a certain elegance to it. But who does this Kurtz think he is? was the immediate follow-on thought. By attempting blackmail, Kurtz had raised the game to a new and more personal level. If Hansen did not play out the rest of the game, he would be tipping his own king in defeat. That weakling Frears and this sociopath of an ex-convict would have beaten James B. Hansen at his own game.

Not fucking likely , thought Hansen, immediately offering a prayer of apology to his Savior.

Hansen turned the Cadillac SUV west and got on the expressway, heading north along the river.

Kurtz had driven to the empty alley near Allen Street, parked the taxi next to the Lincoln, transferred Rafferty to the trunk of the Town Car and the bound, gagged and blindfolded cabdriver from the Lincoln to the taxi, then called Hansen while driving back to the Farino penthouse. Something about actually hearing James B. Hansen's smooth, oily voice had made Kurtz's head pulse with migraine pain.

Back at Marina Towers, he left Rafferty in the trunk and took the elevator up. Everyone was chowing down on lunch and Kurtz joined them. Angelina Farino Ferrara had told her cook, servants, and the eleventh-floor accountants to take the day off—don't try to get in through the storm, she'd said—so the motley crew in the penthouse had thrown together a big meal of chili, John Frears's recipe, and various types of cheese, good French bread and taco chips and hot coffee. Angelina offered wine, but no one was in the mood for it. Kurtz was in the mood for several glasses of scotch, but he decided to forgo it until the day's errands were all run.

After the lunch, he stepped onto the icy and windblown west balcony to clear his head. A few minutes later, Arlene joined him, lighting one of her Marlboros.

"Can you believe it, Joe? She's a Mafia don's daughter but she doesn't allow smoking in her apartment. What's La Cosa Nostra coming to?"

Kurtz didn't answer. The sky to the northwest was as black as a curtain of night sliding toward the city. The lights along the marina and the walkways below had already come on.

"Rafferty?" said Arlene.

Kurtz nodded.

"Can we talk about Rachel for a minute, Joe?"

Kurtz neither answered nor looked at her.

"Gail says that she's showing some improvement today. They're keeping her sedated much of the time and watching for infection in her remaining kidney. Even if there is drastic improvement, it will be several weeks—maybe a month and a half—before she can leave the hospital. And she'll need special care at home."

Kurtz looked at her now. "Yeah? And?"

"I know you won't let Rachel become a ward of the state, Joe."

He didn't have to say anything to show his agreement with that.

"And I know how you go straight at things. Like this Hansen situation. You've always gone straight at things. But maybe in this case you should consider taking the long way."

"How?" Tiny pellets of ice were pelting his face.

"I shouldn't be Rachel's guardian… I've had my child, raised him as best I could, mourned his death. But Gail has always wanted a child. It's one of the main reasons she and Charlie broke up… that and the fact that Charlie was a total asshole."

"Gail… adopt Rachel?" Kurtz's voice was edged.

"It wouldn't have to be a full-scale adoption," said Arlene. "Rachel is fourteen. She'll just need a court-appointed guardian until she turns eighteen. That would be perfect for Gail."

"Gail is single."

"That's not so important for a guardian. Plus, Gail has friends in social services and Niagara Frontier Adoption Option, and she knows several of the child-care legal people. She's been an excellent nurse—remember, her specialty is pediatric surgery—and she has tons of time off coming to her."

Kurtz looked back at the approaching storm.

"You could spend time with her, Joe. With Rachel. Get to know her. Let her get to know you. Someday you could tell her—"

Kurtz looked at her. Arlene stopped, took a drag on her cigarette, and looked up to meet his gaze. "Tell me you'll think about it, Joe."

He went back through the sliding doors into the penthouse.

Hansen crossed the bridge to Grand Island and drove to Emilio Gonzaga's compound. The guards at the gatehouse looked astonished when he showed his badge and said that he was there to see Mr. Gonzaga, but they conferred with the main house via portable radios, searched him carefully to make sure he was not wearing a wire, appropriated his service Glock-9—Hansen had stowed the.38 under the passenger seat—transferred him to a black Chevy Suburban, and drove him up to the main house, where he was searched again and left to wait in a huge library in which the hundreds of leather-bound books looked as if they had never been opened. Two bodyguards, one an Asian man with absolutely no expression on his smooth face, stood against the far wall with their hands at their sides.

When Gonzaga came in, smoking a Cuban cigar, Hansen was struck by how truly ugly the middle-aged don was. The man looked like a toad that had been molded into human form, with an Edward G. Robinson mouth minus the touch of humor.

"Captain Millworth."

"Mr. Gonzaga."

Neither man offered to shake hands. Gonzaga remained standing; Hansen remained sitting. They looked at one another.

"You want something, Detective?"

"I need to talk to you, Don Gonzaga."

The tall, ugly man made a gesture with his cigar.

"You paid my predecessor," said Hansen. "You sent me a check last December. I sent it to charity. I don't need your money."

Gonzaga lifted one heavy black eyebrow. "You come out here in a fucking blizzard to tell me that?"

"I came out here in a blizzard to tell you that I need something more important and that I can give you something very important."

Gonzaga waited. Hansen glanced at the bodyguards. Gonzaga shrugged and did not tell them to leave.

James B. Hansen removed a photograph of Joe Kurtz that he'd pulled from the felon's file. "I need to have this man killed. Or to be more specific, I need help in killing him."

Gonzaga smiled. "Millworth, if you are wearing a wire which somehow my boys did not discover, I shall kill you myself."

Hansen shrugged. "They searched me twice. I'm not wearing a wire. And if I were, what I said is a felony by itself—suborning you to be an accomplice to murder."

"And entrapment also in addition," said Gonzaga. The way the man spoke made Hansen think that human language was not the don's native tongue.

"Yes," said Hansen.

"And what is it that I would receive in exchange for this hypothetical quid-pro-quo service, Detective Millworth?"

"It's Captain Millworth," said Hansen. "Of Homicide. And what you will receive is years of a service that you could not otherwise buy."

"Which would be?" said Gonzaga, implying that he'd already bought every service the Buffalo Police Department had to offer.

"Impunity," said Hansen.

"Im—what?" Emilio Gonzaga removing a long cigar from his mouth made Hansen think of a frog wrestling with a turd.

"Impunity, Don Gonzaga. Freedom not only of prosecution when murders are required of you, but freedom even from serious investigation. A get-out-of-jail card with no jail attached. Not only as far as Homicide is concerned, but Vice, Narcotics… all of the departments."

Gonzaga relit the cigar and furrowed his brow. He was an ostentatious thinker, Hansen could see. Finally Hansen saw the lightbulb over the toad's head as Gonzaga realized what he was being offered.